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Security
“With the help of the festival staff fell into their long-established and
organisers and Festival Republic, our trained procedures of being friendly
staff were well looked after,” says and helpful faces, ready to explain why
Andy. “All the equipment and certain things have to happen in order
structures, booking on systems and to ensure safety for everyone.
other facilities we needed were all set “We sometimes had to send people
up before we set foot on site. Again, it the ‘long way round’, but being
took a lot of planning and we were pleasant about it, providing
very grateful to our clients for their information and explanations goes a
great help with it.” long way to achieving a safe system,”
Although the planning started so says Andy. “As previously mentioned,
far in advance, it seemed like no time crowd cross-flow is probably one of
before Thursday 25th June was upon the most dangerous aspects of a
AP’s staff and the festival was under mismanaged crowd and having ‘one
way. way systems’ is a good way to
“Wednesday and Thursday saw the minimise that - but it’s very important
largest number of early arrivals that to explain to people why they are
anyone could remember. Maximo Park being asked to go in a certain way,
was to open the proceedings on the especially if it’s obviously not the most
Queens Head Stage, which holds direct.
around 1,000 people. With about “We are there to provide direction,
30,000 outside, the secret was to keep reassurance, maybe a warning when
it simple,” says Andy. someone steps a little close to the
“Once the area around the stage acceptable line, but more than
was full, the security and stewarding anything we are there for everyone’s
organisations on site combined to limit safety.”
further flow into the area. We took a However, AP is not about to
holistic view, positioning security and become complacent. Far from it, the
stewards on the access routes around company is always looking for ways to
200m from the area limiting further improve its procedures and also to give
access, providing directions for those others an insight into the issues facing
diverted by the opening set and, above the company’s staff
all, communicating with each other “We went to the festival organisers
and all the festival goers.” and proposed having independent
With the festival underway, AP’s monitors working in our response
vehicles, so they could gain a better
understanding of the issues we faced
on a day-to-day basis and how we
dealt with them,” says Andy.
“We were keen to show our good
practises, but also the difficulties we
faced with things such as having to
manoeuvre a vehicle through huge
crowds, response times to incidents
and so on.
“It was an eye-opener for them and
a good communication opportunity for
our response team managers, who
could jointly solve issues and come up
with ideas and proposals for future
years.”
Winner of the first Safeconcerts
Award for Excellence in 2008 and
twice winner of the Crowd
Management of the Year Award, A.P.
Security has over 17 years’ experience
in the UK leisure market and has
earned itself a reputation for itself at
resource-intensive events such as
Glastonbury Festival and Leeds Carling
Festival, prestigious gatherings such as
Henley Festival of Arts and Music and
the Boat Race, and venues such as O2
Arena, Brixton Academy and Wembley
Stadium.
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